Innovation leads the way

Innovation is something many companies struggle to do despite knowing it’s important. Just how do you become a world leader, create an innovative system or design and lead the way for others to follow? If someone hadn’t innovated and created shipping containers, people would still be unloading wooden crates on the docks. If someone hadn’t innovated and created the automatic washing machine, we would still be passing garments through the mangle. Call it innovation, call it progress, it’s about making something a whole lot more unique or even more efficient.

If your company is struggling to innovate either because key people feel it’s too risky or too time and resource consuming, then these tips may help:

Get the timing right – if doing nothing is becoming an even bigger risk, you have no option but to innovate now.

Get buy-in – create a team of people willing to work on innovation as a project. Those people could be from all departments so don’t discriminate. Your key innovators could be currently be working in your warehouse.

Allocate resources – even if it’s for 10 hours per month it’s a start. Maybe the innovation team could meet each month to generate and progress ideas.

Plan – when the team has a firm idea, put a plan together to see what it looks like from a cost and time point of view and see if it’s viable.

Keep going – don’t stop, think innovation at all times and forge a path forward.

Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” What is your version of a car?